Petals of love? Petals of pain? Or just something from the Biennale?

I’ll never know what happened, but my first reaction was to feel sad for whoever dismembered the rose and scattered its bits to the wind, to the gravel, to the pigeons. To feel sad for the reason why it happened. To feel sad for how they’re feeling now. To feel sad for the rose, too, while I’m at it.

But because I really, really hate feeling sad, especially that early in the morning, when the sun is shining, etc., I let my brain wander around seeking other possible scenarios to account for what had happened that might make me feel better.

Maybe this is an original way for two people to pledge undying, eternal, infinite love. Buy a rose and decapitate it.

Maybe she said, “If I have to choose between having a rose and having you, this is how much I need the rose,” and destroyed it and flung it away. Avaunt!

Or maybe he pulled off the petals one by one and let each float down on her head, saying “I love you” in a different language as each one touched her hair.

Or maybe she hit him with the rose till it fell apart. Maybe they laughed. Maybe they didn’t.

Maybe he said, “If you ever die, I will rip away every remnant of your beauty and sacrifice it to the sun.” (He’d have to have been moderately drunk if he got that far.) (However, I am not.)

I am not going to say that the petals were the color of blood, because that’s just too obvious and trite. But they came darn close.

I’ll tell you what: I’m going to stop all this, and I’m going to stop imagining writing a poem, or a short story, or a one-act play, or anything else.

I’ll leave the subject — and the carcass of the hapless scion of the family Rosaceae — with two thoughts, either one of which makes me feel strangely better.

One — maybe it’s just some work of art from the Biennale, a fragment of improvised performance art.

Two — this observation from an unidentified person:

People say hate is a strong word; well so is love, but people throw it around like it’s nothing.

Or maybe there’s just something about this part of the neighborhood that impels people to strew bits of red vegetable matter.